THE GENOCIDE THAT WASN ’ T — OR : THE DANGER OF PURIM INVERSION Susan R . Breitzer
We are entering into the second Purim affected by Israel ’ s war against Hamas , and the explosion of antisemitism that is looking to outlast the long-awaited cease-fire that thankfully includes the release of hostages . And it is still going to be a fraught one , including for reasons that never should have been allowed to have taken such root . The Purim holiday currently has , as it has many times in history , brought up many lessons , and ones that usually manage to be cogent to the times .
Are the questions , therefore , the right ones being emphasized ? The contemporary handwringing about taking the militaristic actions that are part of the Purim story too literally has become particularly troubling , in light of their potential to play into the hands of our accusers . Even if there is some validity to them concerning certain communities in certain times ( e . g ., Baruch Goldstein from thirty years ago ), it needs to be asked what the assumptions are regarding at least the liberal Jewish community with these emphases ?
A lot of this handwringing centers around the troublesome ninth chapter of Megillat Esther , when Jews of Persia , unable to get the King ’ s decree authorizing their destruction reversed , get instead an authorization to fight back . And fight back they do , killing as many as 75,000 throughout the provinces as well as five hundred in Shushan , not counting Haman ’ s sons . The numbers are understandably troubling .
I am daring to suggest , however , that this was not a genocide , for many reasons beyond the current misuses of this term . To start with , if you count the whole Persian empire ( as opposed to the borders of modern Iran ), which covered half the world , the numbers were actually pretty insignificant . And as to the
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